Today's businesses and organizations rely on an increasing amount of data to accomplish their goals. Storing, retrieving and maintaining data while fulfilling service level agreements (SLAs) is a main cost driver within IT operations.
One approach to address this issue is the concept of Near (on)line storage (also referred to as nearline or NLS), in which less frequently accessed data is stored on slower (but usually cheaper) media and frequently accessed data is stored on fast storage. With this concept fast access to frequently accessed data is provided, while retrieving less frequently accessed data with a reduced response time is accepted.
For example, currently NLS solutions for specific business applications exist, meaning that the logic of processing NLS data has been built into the specific application. This is true both for archiving aged data as well as for reading and/or modifying the data. Such solutions are typically bound to a certain application with a certain release level. However, these NLS solutions require the installation of new software to the enterprise landscape.
Another approach includes the use of Hierarchical Storage Management (HSM) solutions, in which data is automatically moved between high-cost (hard disk drive arrays) and low-cost storage media (i.e., optical discs or tapes). These solutions essentially work on a file level basis. Accordingly, these solutions may not be applied in an efficient manner to databases, because HSM does not support any granularity of the data movement.